Will man change nature and the universe?
He seems to be well on his way. Physicists are busy adding new elements to those existing since the dawn of history.
Chemists create organic compounds unheard of in nature.
Since Wohler successfully performed his synthesis in 1828, man has added a million new compounds to those with which nature has endowed him. What are the tools used in the creation of these wondrous chemicals, in the synthesis of the miracle drugs with whose help man controls and rules his surroundings?
To synthesize one must analyze.
Only systematic studies reveal the correlations between structure and the properties of matter. This is the tenor of Professor Ferguson's volume which outlines the essentials of electron-structural analysis.
Two representative groups of physical measures acquaint us with up-to-date forms of analytical thought.
The simple tools, temperature, density, viscosity, etc. are followed by more complex physical properties in the electro-magnetic field, such as electron diffraction, spectra, and dipole moments.
The volume is expository and descriptive in nature.
On first reading, the heterogeneous correlation analyses may at times appear confusing.
But the author has in general succeeded in homogenizing an admittedly composite subject matter.
A first discussion of chemical bonds includes the concepts of the ion-dipole bond, the intermolecular semipolar bonds in r-complexes, and the hydrogen bond.
The following short chapters deal with covalent bonds, distances, angles, and the intramolecular forces.
Forays into electro-magnetic field theory, finally, lead to a climaxing chapter on the structural analysis of the penicillins.
The last of three chapters on dipole moments, resonance, and absorption spectroscopy is a real timely contribution.
It includes conjugation of chromophores, a fascinating matter on which Professor Ferguson himself has done fundamental work.
It was probably a wise choice to limit the volume almost entirely to organic analysis. Only by inference does the author approach the vastly more complex question of synthesis. The correlations between physical properties and electron structure are treated exhaustively. This is evidenced by scores of tables and quantitative graphs, listing hundreds of compounds from the literature of the last twenty years.
This fact, together with the more than five hundred references, make the volume a prized possession in the hands of all. Diagrams and structural formulas have been neatly reproduced.
The author index, almost eight pages long, reads like a "Who's Who?" in physical and organic chemistry.
This reviewer was pleased to find in it the name of Kasimir Fajans, some twenty years after having worked with him at the University of Munich.
The subject index, however, is a bad compromise between the number of desirable and possible listings.
It falls short of the general level of the book and makes the search for specific compounds tedious.
The reader is not told how to synthesize a universal dye, how to operate the infrared spectrograph, nor how to cure all of man's ills. But he gets a good view of the many facets of analytical thought which spell success or failure in problems of synthesis.
And synthesis alone, in its many ramifications, is the tool that enables man to continue his self-appointed rale of master of the earth.
Professor Ferguson's volume illuminates the questions of analysis and should find its way to the desks of graduate students and researchers alike.
CARL HAMMER FILTER DESIGN DATA FOR COMMUNICATION ENGINEERS, by John Henry Mole.